Frustrated Scheffler finds water hazards at Masters

(The Center Square) - At a speed astronauts haven’t experienced since Apollo, Artemis II re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down near San Diego Friday evening, concluding a historic mission that took humans farther than ever.

There were cheers everywhere, from the amphibious dock ship USS John P. Murtha, ready to pick up the astronauts and their capsule, to Mission Control in Houston.

The Orion spacecraft, nicknamed Integrity by its crew, landed, as scheduled, at 5:07 p.m. Pacific time on the Pacific Ocean in a splashdown that a NASA commentator called “perfect” under clear skies. Everything seemed to go according to plan as three parachutes slowed down Integrity and brought it gently home. Five airbags on Integrity kept the spacecraft upright as recovery teams approached the capsule. 

Before that was some drama. Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound. That’s roughly 25,000 mph.

Animation by NASA showed the capsule as a quickly descending ball of fire - one protected by a heat shield. In the final minutes, the module appeared in a blue sky, falling toward the water. Wiseman reported the entire crew was in good condition.

The descent started with Integrity separating flawlessly around 4:33 p.m. Pacific time from the European Space Agency’s Service Module. Small boats were on route to the splashdown’s target zone.

The astronauts and Integrity were to be retrieved by the USS John P. Murtha, named after the late Pennsylvania congressman. The amphibious dock ship traveled 50 or so miles from Navy Base San Diego to retrieve the astronauts and Integrity. As the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, Navy crew in MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopters took photos and videos for NASA.

Unlike Apollo capsules that were lifted onto ships by cranes, the Artemis capsule was to be towed through the ocean into the amphibious ship’s well deck. Navy divers from Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 1 handled the recovery. The divers, who are also doctors, were to immediately check on the astronauts. 

The astronauts were to board the Navy’s HSC-23 helicopters and be transported to the USS John P. Murtha for medical exams.

It was a mission that broke several records, including Koch becoming the first woman to orbit the moon and Glover, the first Black man to do so. Likewise, Hansen became the first Canadian to go around the moon.

As the crew traveled to the moon’s dark side, the astronauts journeyed 252,756 miles from Earth, breaking Apollo 13’s record in 1970. Hansen, who’s with the Canadian Space Agency, told Mission Control that he and his fellow astronauts “choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.”

NASA is working on making more history in the future.

Earlier this week, NASA spokesperson Cheryl Warner told The Center Square that the space agency and its commercial partners are following a timeline to establish a moon base, with NASA keeping its eye on Mars. 

The first phase consists of Artemis missions to prove transportation and lander capabilities. Warner said support infrastructure including mobility and power systems would be introduced during the second phase in the late 2020s, followed by the addition of larger habitation elements in the early-to-mid 2030s.

“These phased efforts will create the foundation for future Mars missions by maturing critical systems, operational practices, and technologies needed for long‑duration human exploration,” Warner said, answering The Center Square’s questions by email.

For now, NASA is working toward Artemis III, next year’s low Earth orbit flight to test the Orion spacecraft and its rendezvous and docking with one or both moon landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. After that, the schedule calls for Artemis IV in 2028 when humans will step on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

An hour's drive north of New York City, the greenhouses at Cropsey Farm are seeing their first leaves of kale, spinach and arugula emerge. But the farmer who runs the outfit is obsessed with something else: the soaring price of fuel.

Every year, Sue Ferreri typically allows a 10 percent "buffer" for production budgeting, "but it's well above that now...We're looking at 20, 25 percent, and it's mainly due to the diesel cost," she told AFP.

Fuel prices have jumped after the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, which led to a blockage of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a key conduit of oil and fertilizer.

Earlier this week, a gallon (3.8 liters) of diesel -- the fuel most used on the farm located in New City -- rose as high as $5.70 compared with $3.70 in February.

It's essential to the entire operation here: irrigating young plants, spraying fertilizers and plowing the soil.

Shipping costs are up, too, Ferreri said, describing "insane" prices for the delivery of essential farm equipment. Recently when she wanted to order a $60 piece of equipment, the shipping cost was $200, she said.

- 'Pricey' -

Eight people grow flowers, vegetables and fruit using sustainable farming practices on the ten-hectare (25-acre) farm. Customers include restaurant owners as well as local residents who buy produce in a restored 18th-century barn.

Cropsey Farm was already hit by fuel prices hikes following the war in Ukraine and had begun adapting its methods even before the Middle East conflict broke out.

Now, that shift is accelerating.

"We've been switching more to smaller equipment just because it's more efficient on fuel and it can still do what we need it to do," said head mechanic Jonah Monahan. 

For example, an ATV and walk-behind tractor are now on the farm -- both far less energy-intensive than the typical tractor.

But, added Monahan, "for big jobs, we still need the main tractor, which gets pricey."

In one greenhouse, two women lifted tulip plants out of the ground and used a hand-drawn rolling cart to transport them to a refrigerated shed to await sale.

Everything is done to squeeze fuel costs.

- 'Relief' -

Beyond the tool adaptations, Ferreri said the farm is also shifting to "regenerative" practices, such as plowing the soil less deeply and maximizing space by rotating crops or pairing plants. 

The rapid adjustments at Cropsey, typical of a small operation, have not yet reached larger farms, said Ben Brown, an agriculture researcher at the University of Missouri.

"At this point, most farms are left with taking the higher prices and figuring out how to make it work financially," Brown said. 

"However, if elevated prices were to continue, we would expect to see producers shift some acreage to lower energy dependent crops," he said.

Ferreri said the fragile ceasefire agreed between Washington and Tehran gave her some "relief."

"But as a farmer, you can't trust the weather," she said. "We have to just anticipate the worst, hope for the best, and that's kind of where we're at."

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Mizzou football took to social media Friday to announce that the Tigers' game against Kansas has been moved to Sept. 11. The matchup was originally slated for Sept. 12.

The Tigers travel to face the rival Jayhawks in Week 2 of the 2026 season, marking Missouri's first game at Kansas since 2005. It will be an atypical game as the two programs will meet on a Friday.

The game between Missouri and Kansas will be one of three games occurring that day. Additionally, Rutgers is set to play at Boston College, and Villanova will travel to Louisville.

The Tigers had not faced Kansas since 2011 after transitioning to the Southeastern Conference, but they revived the rivalry in 2025. The game took place on Missouri's home turf, and the Tigers walked away with a 42-31 victory.

The Tigers look to come away with another win in 2026, this time on the road. Missouri and Kansas are also confirmed to play each other in 2031 and 2032.

Rory McIlroy delivered one of the most stunning finishes in major golf history, making birdies on six of Friday's last seven holes to seize a record six-stroke lead after 36 holes at the Masters.

Defying fast and firm conditions at Augusta National, McIlroy fired a seven-under-par 65 in the second round to stand on 12-under-par 132 at the midpoint of the year's first major.

World number two McIlroy's closing run included holing out a spectacular 29-yard pitch at the par-four 17th hole and sinking a six-foot birdie putt at the 18th to break the old 36-hole record lead of five shots.

"Just an amazing end to the round," McIlroy said. "When I was standing on the 12th tee, I didn't imagine I would be six ahead going into the weekend."

McIlroy, trying to become only the fourth player to capture back-to-back green jackets, sank seven-foot birdie putts at the par-three 12th and par-five 13th holes to seize the lead.

He added another from 10 feet at the par-five 15th and sank a three-foot birdie putt at the par-three 16th.

Then came the pitch-in stunner and an approach to six feet at 18 followed by the clutch putt for his fourth straight birdie at Masters history.

"This golf course, you can get on runs," McIlroy said. "And for me, it's all about staying patient until I feel good enough that I can get on them."

Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion, missed a six-foot putt and made bogey at 18 to shoot 69 and share a distant second with fellow American Sam Burns on 138.

England's Justin Rose, a three-time Masters runner-up, and compatriot Tommy Fleetwood, seeking his first major title shared fourth on 139 with Ireland's Shane Lowry, the 2019 British Open winner.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Shreveport's Sam Burns finished with a strong second round at The Masters shooting an one-under 71, Friday.

He's six-under par at the tournament in a tie for second place with Patrick Reed.

The former LSU and Calvary star had a bogey and birdie on his first nine holes.

It was starting to get away from Burns on the back nine with bogeys on 11 and 13, but with birdies on 15, 17 and 18, it rocketed him back up the leader board.

Rory McIlroy is in the lead at 12-under par for a six shot lead after a second round 65, which saw him birdie six out of his last seven holes.

US President Donald Trump made a late intervention in Hungary's bitter election campaign on Friday, as nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban battles for votes against a pro-European opponent leading him in polls.

Trump vowed to bring US "economic might" to Hungary if Orban's party secures a victory over his arch-rival Peter Magyar in Sunday's election.

The comments added late drama to the campaign finale that saw Orban and Magyar trade accusations of dirty dealing. 

Orban, who has run Hungary for 16 years and is close to Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin, faces an unprecedented challenge with opinion polls putting Magyar's conservative Tisza party well ahead.

"We are excited to invest in the future prosperity that will be generated by Orban's continued leadership," Trump said on social media.

Trump's administration has embraced the promotion of hard-right forces in Europe -- casting migration and "woke" values as a "civilisational" threat to the continent.

Orban has locked horns with the European Union leadership, which accuses him of quashing dissent and eroding the rule of law, and has frozen billions of euros in funding.

"Our opponents will stop at nothing to seize power," Orban said in a social media video, accusing the opposition of "colluding" with foreign intelligence and threatening his supporters with violence.

"This is an organised attempt to use chaos, pressure, and international vilification to call into question the decision of the Hungarian people," he said.

Magyar fired back with accusations of his own.

"The series of ongoing election fraud carried out for months by the ruling party, Fidesz, along with criminal acts, intelligence operations, disinformation and fake news cannot change the fact that Tisza is going to win this election," he said in a Facebook post.

- 'Orban will be removed' -

"Viktor Orban will be removed by the very same people... he has abandoned and betrayed: millions of Hungariaalm and dignity".

Orban's government has repeatedly made accusations of foreign interference.

Magyar has in turn alleged the same, as US Vice President JD Vance visited the country this week to underline Washington's support of Orban.

The two rivals have also stepped up their campaign appearances, drawing big crowds to rallies.

"We came out here because we have faith in Peter Magyar, and we've had enough of the old system," Attila Jozsa told AFP at the opposition leader's rally before 20,000 people in Gyor, 120 kilometres (75 miles) west of Budapest, on Thursday.

Around 2,000 Orban supporters gathered in Hungary's second largest city Debrecen, as the nationalist leader appealed to them to "not put everything at risk" and to "protect what we have achieved".

Trump had already hailed Orban as a "truly strong and powerful leader".

"Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBAN... I AM WITH HIM ALL THE WAY!" Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

During Orban's tenure, his ruling coalition has used its two-thirds majority in parliament to overhaul the central European country's electoral system and leverage state resources to campaign, while his business allies radically changed the media environment.

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Anthropic postponing the release of its new AI model Claude Mythos, said to be so skilled at coding it could be a wicked weapon for hackers, has encountered a mix of alarm and skepticism.

The company is among several contenders in a fierce artificial intelligence race. Promoting the awe of Anthropic's own technology boosts business and enhances its allure in the event it soon goes public, as is rumored.

"The world has no choice but to take the cyber threat associated with Mythos seriously," said David Sacks, an entrepreneur and investor who heads President Donald Trump's council of advisors on technology.

"But it's hard to ignore that Anthropic has a history of scare tactics."

Mythos has sparked fears of hackers commanding armies of AI agents able to break through computer defenses with ease.

At this week's HumanX AI conference in San Francisco, Alex Stamos of startup Corridor, which addresses AI safety, acknowledged a real threat from agentic hackers.

And Stamos quipped about what he referred to as Anthropic's "marketing schtick."

"They have these adorable cutesy cartoons about these products that are so incredibly dangerous that they won't even let people use them," Stamos said of the San Francisco-based startup.

"It's like if the Manhattan Project announced the nuclear bomb within a cute little Calvin and Hobbes cartoon."

The heads of America's biggest banks met this week with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to weigh the security implications of the yet-to-be released Claude Mythos, according to reports Friday.

"Mythos model points to something far more consequential than another leap in artificial intelligence," Cato Networks co-founder and chief executive Shlomo Kramer said in a blog post.

"It signals a shift that could redefine the balance between attackers and defenders in cyberspace."

A tightly restricted preview of Mythos was shared with partner organizations this week, under an initiative called Project Glasswing. They include Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, CrowdStrike and JPMorgan Chase.

According to Anthropic and partners, Mythos can autonomously scan vast amounts of code to find and chain together previously unknown security vulnerabilities in all kinds of software, from operating systems to web browsers.

Crucially, they warn, this can be done at a speed and scale no human could match, meaning it could be used to bring down banks, hospitals or national infrastructure within hours.

"What once required elite specialists can now be performed by software agents," Shlomo said.

"The immediate consequences will be a surge in vulnerability discovery, a true tsunami" of exploiting known and unknown vulnerabilities.

- 'Agent-to Agent War' -

At HumanX, the apparent consensus was that it makes sense that AI agents already adept at coding will excel at finding weaknesses in software.

"We're not in an era where human beings can write code when we have superhuman (AI models) that are then going to find bugs in it," Stamos contended.

"It's just not possible."

He predicted the coming dynamic will involve humans supervising AI agents to protect networks against hackers using that same technology to attack.

Stamos referred to it as "agent-to-agent war," with humans on the sidelines giving advice.

Wendy Whitmore, of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, expects "some sort of catastrophic attack" this year connected to AI agent capabilities.

"The thing that keeps me up at night is that we're staring down the barrel of a massive influx of new vulnerabilities that are going to be found by AI," said Adam Meyers of CrowdStrike.

Meyers saw embedding a tiny AI model directly into malicious code infecting networks as a natural tactic to be explored by hackers.

"The ultimate weapon would be malware that has no pre-programming," Meyers said.

"It can do whatever you ask it to."

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World number one Scottie Scheffler sank down the Masters leaderboard Friday, twice splashing into the water on a difficult day, but insisted he played much better than his score suggested.

The four-time major champion, seeking his third Masters crown in five seasons, struggled to a two-over par 74 in Friday's second round.

It was his second-worst score in 26 rounds at Augusta National, leaving him on level par 144 at the tournament's midway point.

"Was really challenging. I played really pretty well. I felt like I played a lot better than my score," Scheffler said.

"Just the little things that I felt like I was close to having a really good round. Just a few things here or there, a few breaks that didn't go my way. Yeah, the margins are small."

Scheffler's round snapped the third-longest streak in Masters history of rounds at par or below at 11, his run eclipsed only by the record 16 of Tiger Woods and 15 by Jon Rahm.

Scheffler stumbled early with bogeys at the par-three fourth and par-four fifth holes but responded with birdies at the par-five eighth and par-four 10th.

The big heartbreak came with bogeys at the par-five 13th and 15th holes.

Scheffler plunked his second shot at 13 into Rae's Creek and found water again at 15.

"I got off to a slow start. A few up and downs early that I should have had that I didn't convert. Then I fought back to get it to even," Scheffler said.

"And then the fairway on 13, probably my only shot I would rather be able to hit again. Maybe a different decision there. That's a tough shot, but I felt like I could make something happen to that pin."

His 3-iron missed badly.

"I just didn't draw it enough," Scheffler said. "I just tried to swing it with the slope and just didn't catch it that solid and kind of hung out there.

"It was frustrating to get it back to even, have a couple of par-fives in front of me, and then not do many things I felt wrong and wasn't able to convert really basically anything coming down the stretch."

Scheffler also struggled on the greens.

"I would like to hole a few more putts. I felt like it was rolling nice but balls just weren't dropping," he said.

"Maybe my reads were a little bit off. I felt like I was starting on line, could have been speed on a couple of putts, but overall I felt like I definitely played better than my score."

Scheffler said he thought Augusta National officials could have made the green speeds even tougher but relented after a tough afternoon Thursday.

"I was surprised at the greens," Scheffler said. "I think they may have saw how difficult it was late in the day yesterday. It felt like they softened them up a bit, but I couldn't imagine them doing that the rest of the weekend."

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A statue reveal to honor Japanese baseball legend Ichiro Suzuki went awry on Friday when a key detail in the bronze tribute broke during a ceremonial unveiling.

Seattle Mariners legend Ichiro was among the onlookers as former teammates Ken Griffey Jr and Edgar Martinez yanked off a sheet covering the statue.

Unfortunately, the big reveal of the statue -- depicting the Japanese star in his famous batting stance -- appeared to have snapped the bat at its handle.

"I did not do that," Griffey was quoted as saying according to the Seattle Times.

Ichiro -- the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame -- laughed at the mishap as Griffey covered his eyes.

Ichiro meanwhile blamed the incident on New York Yankees pitching legend Mariano Rivera, renowned for breaking hitters' bats.

"I didn't think Mariano would come out here and break the bat," Ichiro said via an interpreter, according to the Times.

Ichiro retired from baseball in 2019 after a near-two-decade Major League Baseball career as an outfielder famed for extraordinary bat control and ball placement.

Ichiro was a 10-time MLB All-Star and set an MLB record with 262 hits in a single season. He was the American League Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year in 2001, when he led the AL in batting and stolen bases.

He finished his MLB career with 3,089 hits, a .311 batting average with 117 home runs, 780 runs batted in and 509 stolen bases.

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Chinese golfer Li Haotong battled through illness and into Masters contention with four consecutive birdies Friday, despite being so sick in the morning he could barely leave the bathroom.

Speaking after his second-round 69 propelled him to just a shot off the clubhouse lead, Li admitted he was surprised to have even completed 18 holes, let alone reach the tournament midway point at four-under-par.

I "went to the toilet last night a lot of times, and this morning when I got to the golf course and was still feeling really bad and kind of, like, (living) in the toilet," he told reporters.

"I was feeling really, really bad. No energy, fuzzy, want to throw up something. I actually just planned to play a few holes, see how it goes," he said.

"If (I was) really sick, then I probably just decide not to. So glad I survived today."

Li, the top-ranked Chinese golfer and world number 84, birdied his second hole on Friday, but endured an otherwise shaky front nine including two bogies.

Somehow he then pulled himself together and scored straight birdies on holes 13 through 16.

Li sank a nine-foot putt on 13 to begin his hot streak, then nearly holed a 150-foot approach iron on 14 to leave himself an tap-in for birdie.

Despite running his ball way off the back of the par-five 15th, Li threaded an extraordinary recovery wedge through the trees.

"I think the best moment is that number 15, the par-5," he said. "I got the wind wrong. It was a super tough chip over there and I got something, like, incredibly up and down."

He then completed the run by barely missing a hole-in-one on the par-three 16th.

"Especially after that four birdies, somehow I felt quite nice... Major makes me feel good," he joked after.

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